Pamplona (EFE).- The Labrit footbridge in Pamplona reopens to pedestrian traffic after completing the reinforcement and repair works and passing the dynamic and static load tests.
“That’s it, it’s already open for public use,” said the mayor of Pamplona, Enrique Maya, at the time of its opening, who pointed out that it was “an important demand” from the citizens and after “a long time” and a The “very complex” process is already available to the public, for which he has assured that they are “very happy”.
With a feeling of “liberation” he has assured receiving the closure of a file that has been “very hard”, while pointing out that “we should not launch rockets either because if it had been well done all this would not have happened”.
Inaugurated in 2010, the first problems were detected in 2016, due to oxidation problems and deterioration of some steel plates and after several occasional closures to carry out maintenance work, the walkway was provisionally closed to pedestrian traffic on July 5, 2016 and definitively in the month of September of that same year.
The City Council will claim
The reinforcement and repair works have had a cost of 807,214 euros, to which must be added the studies and technical works commissioned from 2016 to the present, in addition to the repair project, inspections and scaffolding and other actions around the infrastructure itself. , amount that the City Council will claim from the parties involved in the process.
In this regard, the mayor has reiterated that he has always defended that it is “easier” to claim something when “you have repaired it, you know what it has cost, you have everything perfectly detailed, even with notarial acts to know what the problems were and what the solutions, that without a gateway to try to claim the money with a file almost as if it were a traffic ticket: you owe us 800,000, pay it ”.
In his opinion, “from the legal technical point of view it was ridiculous, today we would be without a catwalk and with a difficult position in the face of the trials that there will undoubtedly be. In this sense, peace of mind, it has been done well and I am confident that “the claim for the total cost that this poor initial execution of the footbridge has entailed for the city will prosper”.
A new catwalk, “more difficult to defend”
Regarding the possibility of having built a new footbridge instead of carrying out this repair, he stated that “in any case it would have been more expensive and legally very difficult to defend.” To this he added that “as a design it is very good, it has a slenderness, some important characteristics”.
Maya has spoken in this sense in statements to the media during the visit of the members of the Management and the Urban Planning Commission to the catwalk, a visit in which the opposition groups have not participated, of which she has Said he can’t understand them.
“Today they are not here because they are enraged, they have taken an attitude with this work of absolutely leaving the government team alone, they will know why they do it, I think that for them it is a failure that this is open,” added Maya, who has indicated that they have been invited to attend but have not wanted to.
Seven years to reopen
The problems detected in the footbridge and the reforms carried out have been detailed by the director of Urban Conservation, Óscar Esquíroz, who has pointed out, among other issues, that “there were problems of the absence of welding in important points and of welding defects” .
“Carrying out this welding has been a very slow process that multiplied by x the amount of money and by three x the time necessary to carry out the work and this is what has led to a totally unpredictable increase in cost and above all a large increase in execution time,” he asserted.
In this regard, he pointed out that “some 42 or 43 tons of the 125 that the footbridge had have been replaced and a weld has been made that is at least 30% greater in length than the one initially made. A lot of welding has been added which is absolutely necessary.”
If the relevant tests had been carried out at the time, “some” of the problems would have been discovered, Esquíroz has indicated.
The opposition does not attend the reopening
The municipal opposition groups in the Pamplona City Council have not participated in the visit that the Management and the Urban Planning Commission have made to the Labrit catwalk on the occasion of its opening to pedestrian traffic to demonstrate their rejection of the management of the government of Navarre Suma.
In a statement, EH Bildu explains that it has not attended the “covert inauguration” of the catwalk due to the “obscurantism with which UPN has managed this work.” “Today is not a working visit from the Urban Planning Commission, something that we have been insistently demanding for months, but rather a covert inauguration, a photo of shame in which we cannot participate without the citizens who She has attended this botch in astonishment, and I reproach them for them”, maintains the Abertzale group.
Likewise, the PSN denounces the way in which Navarra Suma announced this visit, through an addendum to the Urban Planning Management today, “without indicating whether or not it was going to open to the public and seeking to deceive the groups into supporting a management that we have been criticizing for a long time ”.
From Geroa Bai it is indicated that their representatives have decided not to attend because, although they are glad “of the start-up for the citizenry”, they cannot accept “the management carried out by Navarra Suma” as good.